The Daily Startup: DFJ Bets On Nervana For Machine Learning

Machine learning, which was all the rage among developers in the 1980s only to fall out of favor in the 1990s when real-world results were slow to materialize, is back with a vengeance today, says Draper Fisher Jurvetson Partner Steve Jurvetson. The firm just provided most of a $3.3 million Series A round for San Diego-based Nervana Systems, a company designing chips, hardware and software that the company says will offer a major shot in the arm to functions like speech analysis, image recognition and a computer’s ability to learn over time, VentureWire’s Tim Hay reports. Also joining the round were Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures.

ALSO IN TODAY’S VENTUREWIRE (subscription required):

Xamarin has raised $54 million to make acquisitions and boost the growth of its app development platform. The Series C round was led by new and current investors and includes Lead Edge Capital, Insight Venture Partners, Charles River Ventures, Ignition Partners and Floodgate.

Alfresco Software has raised $45 million at a valuation of more than $300 million to help customers better control how documents are preserved and shared digitally. The funding was led by Sageview Capital and includes current investors Accel Partners, Mayfield Fund and SAP Ventures.

FeeX, which crowdsources information about fees for investments, has raised $6.5 million Series B round from Horizons Ventures and Blumberg Capital.

OnBeep, a company developing a wearable gadget that enables users to communicate with one another without having to look down at a screen on a mobile device, has raised a $6.25 million Series A round led by Rich Levandov of Avalon Ventures, joined by Fuel Capital and individual investors.

Avant Credit, an online loan provider, has raised a $200 million credit facility from investment bank Jefferies to grow its business making direct consumer loans to “near-prime” borrowers in the U.S. and the U.K.

Pure Storage, a flash-storage company, has named Tim Riittersas chief financial officer. Mr. Riitters previously worked at Google for 10 years, where he was responsible for overseeing the companywide annual planning and budgeting processes.

Domo, a business intelligence software-as-a-service company started by Omniture co-founder Josh James, has appointed Bruce Felt chief financial officer. For almost six years, Mr. Felt was CFO of SuccessFactors, where he guided the company through a public offering, six acquisitions and the $3.4 billion sale of the business to SAP.

(VentureWire is a daily newsletter with comprehensive analysis of all the investments, deals and personnel moves involving start-ups and their venture backers. For a two-week trial, click here.)

ELSEWHERE AROUND THE WEB:

The Tech Elite Invade Burning Man. A few years ago, the image of Burning Man as a white-hot desert filled with 50,000 stoned, half-naked hippies doing sun salutations while techno music thumps through the air was mostly correct. But over the last two years, the New York Times’ Nick Bilton reports, the festival in the Nevada desert has been the annual getaway for a new crop of technology moguls bringing their extravagant tastes and, some say, ruining it for everyone else.

Dropbox Loses High-Profile Design Head. The head designer of Dropbox said in a Facebook post he was leaving his job at the cloud storage company, Kara Swisher reports for re/code. Before joining Dropbox in 2012 in what was considered a hiring coup, Soleio, who typically goes by one name, was the second designer hired at Facebook and was credited with its famous Like button.

Google Capital Makes Its Latest Deal. Just three months after services marketplace Thumbtack raised $30 million, it has raised $100 million more, the WSJ’s Lizette Chapman reports. Google Capital led the infusion, valuing the five-year-old company at more than $800 million in a round designed to prepare it for an eventual IPO. Existing investors Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital and Javelin Venture Partners also participated in the Series D round.

Online Sports Retailer Fanatics Gets Shakeup. New Fanatics CEO Doug Mack has passed the 100-day mark on the job, and he’s now ready to put his stamp on the online sports retailer with key new hires and a realignment of company priorities, reports Jason Del Rey of re/code. Fanatics’ parent company is backed by firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Venture Partners, Temasek and Alibaba Group.

A Second Act For The Internet Of Things. The first wave of the Internet of Things was the use of the smartphone as a remote control to manage, for instance, a thermostat, writes David Hirsch, co-founder of Metamorphic Ventures and a former Google executive, in a TechCrunch guest post. The next phase will about connecting Internet-enabled devices in the home, and using data to improve people’s lives and the efficiency of their businesses.

Young People Don’t Know, Or Care, About Wearables. According to a survey of 1,000 college students conducted by the online textbook startup Chegg, 67 percent of them had never even heard the term “wearables,” 14 percent say they would pay more than $150 for a wearable, and 35 percent say they aren’t even remotely interested in Apple’s iWatch, PandoDaily’s David Holmes reports.

Will Techies Ever Ditch San Francisco?Techstars Seattle said 67 percent more S.F.-based companies applied to the program over the last year, and SF Weekly’s Joe Eskenazi asks: Does this portend a San Francisco tech exodus? The answer: Probably not.

Keith Teare Sets Sights on Micro Funds. Tech industry veteran Keith Teare says he plans to raise two separate $400 million funds that would employ unusual strategies, StrictlyVC reports. He calls one of the funds Micro Fund Capital, a fund of funds that would target micro funds; the other, 2nd Round Capital, would make direct investments in the first portfolio’s breakout successes. The TechCrunch and Archimedes Labs co-founder says he knows raising the money won’t be a walk in the park.

The Latest Bad Behavior in the Tech World. At a July networking event in Berlin, a European angel investor sent an unwelcome, inappropriate email to a female entrepreneur and became the latest in the growing list of tech males behaving terribly, Valleywag reported. The investor admitted to TechCrunch that he sent the email, and it emerged that he sent the same email to another woman at the event.

About Venture Capital Dispatch

Produced by the editors of Dow Jones VentureWire, Venture Capital Dispatch tracks the fast-moving developments at the intersection of high-tech innovation and venture capital finance. Featuring the VentureWire reporting team in the Silicon Valley, New York, Boston and Shanghai tech centers, Venture Capital Dispatch provides insight into the newest start-ups and latest trends in venture capital investing. Write us at VCdispatch@dowjones.com. For more information on Dow Jones products covering venture capital and other financial markets, go to http://pevc.dowjones.com.